Writing about Juergen Teller’s forthcoming exhibition at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, ICA director Gregor Muir notes: “whether he is an artist or photographer … or anything connected with such thoughts, can only lead us astray. Teller’s work is about great images.” Indeed, the German-born photographer moves between genres with breathtaking ease. Acclaimed in the fashion world for his Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, and Marc Jacobs campaigns (among many others), Teller has long ago made a name for himself with more personal series of works. “Ed in Japan” compellingly records a trip taken with his wife, gallerist Sadie Coles, and their then-infant son. His private life is also at the heart of Teller’s “Irene im Wald,” which was shot in the forest with his mother in his hometown of Erlangen, and “Keys to the House,” portraits of family and friends in the British countryside.

Whatever the subject (and the preparation these images involve), Teller’s images bristle with raw emotion. They advertise a sense of authenticity characteristic of pictures taken off-the-cuff, on the spur of the moment. Known for never touching up his work, the photographer shows his numerous muses each captured within an uncompromising light: whether Charlotte Rampling naked in the Louvre, Vivienne Westwood flashing a red pube, or Kristen McMenamy baring her anus. Teller is equally challenging with himself, posing shitting in snow, or with his head stuck in a platter of roasted pig. Yet, for all its provocation and surrounding controversy, there’s a genuine sense of tenderness in Teller’s work, a palpable enthusiasm and genuine complicity between photographer and subject. A week before the opening of his ICA show, ARTINFO UK met the man at his West London studio.

I was thinking about your recent projects “Irene im Wald” and “Keys to the House.” How do you link these two series?

I’ve always wanted to photograph the forest. I lived next to the forest, and I very much like to be there. But I was never able to photograph it, because there are so many trees, and for some reasons, I tried too hard. A couple of years ago, when we were renting this house in Suffolk, I started photographing the landscape there, and I was very pleased with the results. Because these Suffolk landscapes worked, that gave me a confidence to go back to the forest, to go back home. I realised it’s when you actually just look and don’t impose yourself too much on it that the pictures come to you. But you have to look a lot. I walked a lot, and I took many, many photographs.

Was the problem the immensity of the forest? Did you feel it would escape you?

Well, I just couldn’t see the wood for the trees. It really helped me to do these simple landscape pictures in Suffolk. And then my mom wanted to join me. She liked that I came back and spent some days with her, going for walks in the countryside. That’s when I started to photograph my mother.

Do you feel that you’ve established a different kind of relationship with her through these images?

Yes, because I wrote a text about it too. It’s in the book, and it will be in the exhibition underneath the photographs. Let’s say it has bridged certain gaps between my mother and me, in a good way. She’s fully behind me now.

Wasn’t she always?

There was a certain question mark. Obviously she doesn’t like certain images, but I believe she is more forgiving now, because she understands everything more.

You’ve been taking pictures of your family for a long time. Do you see your practice, or part of your practice, as a sort of diary?

No. I don’t see it at all as a diary. I have certain ideas, and they are mostly project-based. “Ed in Japan” [2006], which I shot when my son was 11 months, was a journey we took through Japan and that became a book and an exhibition. I wouldn’t just photograph Ed today, brushing his teeth and tomorrow going to school. 

Can you tell me about the ICA exhibition?

It has three rooms. All the framed work is pretty much my personal work, and then there’s a small room, the reading room, which will have a table with books of mine attached. On all four walls, I will wallpaper about 700 photographs, from top to bottom. There will be everything: Céline ads, Jigsaw ads, Marc Jacobs ads, portraits, everything like that.

You are showing photographs in several different ways: on magazine-type paper, framed, or in books. Do you think about the final materiality of the image when you shoot it?

Well, there’s always a different reason for a different thing. For example, when I did the picture of Victoria Beckham in a plastic bag with her head sticking out for a Marc Jacobs ad, there was monthly discussion between Victoria, Marc, and me. Then you have to produce the oversized bag, you have to have it built. Then all you do is fly to L.A. and execute it. It was pretty clear that this picture could be something, more than just a silly fashion ad.

Isn’t that always what you have in mind?

Yes, but I knew with this one for sure. This picture is also on the wall on one of the upstairs rooms.